A Calendar of Sonnets

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Title: A Calendar of Sonnets
Author: Helen Hunt Jackson
Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9825]?[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]?[This file was first posted on October 21, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
? START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CALENDAR OF SONNETS ***
Produced by Distributed Proofreaders
A Calendar of Sonnets
By
Helen Jackson
1886,
January
O winter! frozen pulse and heart of fire,?What loss is theirs who from thy kingdom turn?Dismayed, and think thy snow a sculptured urn?Of death! Far sooner in midsummer tire?The streams than under ice. June could not hire?Her roses to forego the strength they learn?In sleeping on thy breast. No fires can burn?The bridges thou dost lay where men desire?In vain to build.
O Heart, when Love's sun goes?To northward, and the sounds of singing cease,?Keep warm by inner fires, and rest in peace.?Sleep on content, as sleeps the patient rose.?Walk boldly on the white untrodden snows,?The winter is the winter's own release.
February.
Still lie the sheltering snows, undimmed and white;?And reigns the winter's pregnant silence still;?No sign of spring, save that the catkins fill,?And willow stems grow daily red and bright.?These are the days when ancients held a rite?Of expiation for the old year's ill,?And prayer to purify the new year's will:?Fit days, ere yet the spring rains blur the sight,?Ere yet the bounding blood grows hot with haste,?And dreaming thoughts grow heavy with a greed?The ardent summer's joy to have and taste;?Fit days, to give to last year's losses heed,?To reckon clear the new life's sterner need;?Fit days, for Feast of Expiation placed!
March
Month which the warring ancients strangely styled?The month of war,--as if in their fierce ways?Were any month of peace!--in thy rough days?I find no war in Nature, though the wild?Winds clash and clang, and broken boughs are piled?At feet of writhing trees. The violets raise?Their heads without affright, without amaze,?And sleep through all the din, as sleeps a child.?And he who watches well may well discern?Sweet expectation in each living thing.?Like pregnant mother the sweet earth doth yearn;?In secret joy makes ready for the spring;?And hidden, sacred, in her breast doth bear?Annunciation lilies for the year.
April
No days such honored days as these! When yet?Fair Aphrodite reigned, men seeking wide?For some fair thing which should forever bide?On earth, her beauteous memory to set?In fitting frame that no age could forget,?Her name in lovely April's name did hide,?And leave it there, eternally allied?To all the fairest flowers Spring did beget.?And when fair Aphrodite passed from earth,?Her shrines forgotten and her feasts of mirth,?A holier symbol still in seal and sign,?Sweet April took, of kingdom most divine,?When Christ ascended, in the time of birth?Of spring anemones, in Palestine.
May
O month when they who love must love and wed!?Were one to go to worlds where May is naught,?And seek to tell the memories he had brought?From earth of thee, what were most fitly said??I know not if the rosy showers shed?From apple-boughs, or if the soft green wrought?In fields, or if the robin's call be fraught?The most with thy delight. Perhaps they read?Thee best who in the ancient time did say?Thou wert the sacred month unto the old:?No blossom blooms upon thy brightest day?So subtly sweet as memories which unfold?In aged hearts which in thy sunshine lie,?To sun themselves once more before they die.
June
O month whose promise and fulfilment blend,?And burst in one! it seems the earth can store?In all her roomy house no treasure more;?Of all her wealth no farthing have to spend?On fruit, when once this stintless flowering end.?And yet no tiniest flower shall fall before?It hath made ready at its hidden core?Its tithe of seed, which we may count and tend?Till harvest. Joy of blossomed love, for thee?Seems it no fairer thing can yet have birth??No room is left for deeper ecstasy??Watch well if seeds grow strong, to scatter free?Germs for thy future summers on the earth.?A joy which is but joy soon comes to dearth.
July
Some flowers are withered and some